Year of the Muffin
by Anonymous Bob1
Summary: When you look into the future, be sure to shield your eyes....Oh, yeah, and wear lots of sunblock!
1. The beginning

Author's note: This is another of those we are in an alternate reality/future things where you insert your friends and guess how they'll act. The characters may be fictional or not, the nonfic ones are use sparingly.  
  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Buenos Aires, January 23, 2016  
  
  
  
The newly elected Emperor looked at the olive green blazer in disgust. It's a cotton pickle, the Holy Muffin Emperor decided. He nodded to the Imperial Guard (IG) standing next to the tailor, who quickly used a flamethrower on the suit. The tailor looked horrified. His not-so-hard work had been in vain. Oh well, at least he would still be paid. It had happened before. Bob I maybe the pickiest person in the Muffin Empire, but he was fair. Most of the time.  
  
"Take your money and go, senor," the IG told the tailor.  
  
"Si, Si!" he nodded before rushing out the door.  
  
When will they learn, Bob I wondered. Jared Anderson does not wear green. It seems too.......cucumber-colored. Ever since his rise to power in the Muffin Empire, a.k.a South America lumped into one country, he had felt out of touch with the people. Perhaps it was because he could hardly speak Spanish, let alone attempt the Portugese spoken in what used to be Brazil. He quickly picked out another suit, this one blue, from the closet and put it on after dismissing the IG. They had it easy, he thought, all they had to wear was a sweat suit and then a red robe over that. Like the ones on Star Wars, he mused. Perhaps the Empress would also find this amusing.  
  
  
  
Paris, French Republic  
  
  
  
"Where are my anime books!" Chelli, queen of France, screamed at the Chinese ambassador. He looked nervously around the room before being thrown across the queen's study. He hit the bookcase hard, rocking it. Three books, labeled JAJA Collections, dropped onto his head, knocking him unconcious if he wasn't already.  
  
"There they are," the calmed queen said. She retired to her room in the Palace of Versaille, which was, literally, a mile away. She collapsed onto her bed twenty minutes later, too tired to read.  
  
The evening sun set on the Palace, and it began to rain.  
  
  
  
New York City, NY, Ashleyland  
  
  
  
CEO Jordan stepped out of the limo, careful of the ice that had gripped the big apple, and trotted into JAJA World Headquarters. She took the elevator up to her office on the 86th floor. It should have been 87 floors for the year she was born, but the company had run out of money while building it. The shortage was definitely not linked to a generous donation to her favorite dancing company from an executive, that was for sure.  
  
Jenny skipped past her secretary, coincidentally named Dustin, stealing his diet pepsi as she walked into her corner office. The wall clock read 2:55 PM, the digital clock on her desk said 2:50 PM, and her watch with a twisting face read 3 on the dot. She decided on the watch.  
  
The afternoon light cast a slim shadow on the rose resting on her desk.  
  
Where did that rose come from? she thought. She heard a gun clicking from the direction of her desk, and began to get nervous. 


	2. A punk and a Panda, random, no?

Chapter 2  
  
  
-----New York City, NY, Ashleyland-----  
  
  
  
"Who's there?" Jenny asked slowly and softly.  
  
"Jenny?" a wonam in a trenchcoat inquired from under the desk as she crawled out. "Is that you?"  
  
"Esther?"  
  
"I didn't know I was supposed to kill you! Now I've wasted two hours of my life under a desk for noooooo reason. Just great!"  
  
"So you're not going to kill me?"  
  
"No!" Esther threw the revolver to the ground, and it bounced up and went off. The projectile hit the ceiling, causing a tile to fall down and knock out the hitwoman.  
  
Ouch, Jenny thought, as Esther fell the ground stunned. Who would want Jenny Jordan dead? she wondered to herself as she decided to call an ambulance instead of the police.  
  
  
-----Langley, Virginia, Ashleyland-----  
  
  
  
Ashley Morrell Lamb waited in the pink minivan outside William Werner Middle School for what seemed like ages. Finally, she saw her son, Geneley, walk out of the double doors behind a stampede of cattle, er, students. His gothic clothes reflected an interest in everything dead and strange, especially strange to Ashley. How embarrassing to have a son sooooo dark get into a pink minivan. What would the other mom's think? she wondered.  
  
They began the long, silent drive home. Ten minutes into it, Genely saw something that sparked his interest. Out to his right was a large, Disneyworld-style castle, with a large and uninviting gate around it. Surrounding the green castle were many small buildings, but they had no doors.  
  
"Ashley, what is that?" the thirteen-year-old said with attitude.  
  
"That's the Willy Werna Science Factory. No one ever goes in or comes out. But there they make the most wonderful Rewritable CD's ever. They have all kinds of other techno stuff too. I bet the competition would love to get someone in there to spy. They say he has hired a bunch of small, strange men to work there to do his bidding."  
  
"Sounds like a nutcase to me."  
  
"There's also a contest, and the winner who finds the golden Pentium XXXXIV processor gets to go inside the factory."  
  
"Big deal." Genely had another idea. I'll get the competition to hire me and then I'll sneak in and spy on Willy Werna, Genely thought.  
  
  
-----London, England-----  
  
  
  
Excellent, Queen Katie thought. All was going according to plan. After rewriting the Royal family tree to include the Winsors' newfound "cousin", Katie Gibson had hired one of her closest friends to send them on a permanent vacation. She would have laughed an evil laugh, except it wasn't her thing. That was for the people she surrounded herself with.  
  
Speaking of which, she had just summoned her lawyer, which had been directed to find a loophole in the entire "the monarch cannot dissolve parliament without it's consent" thing. He said he had a solution.  
  
Suddenly he came in, proclaiming, "Your majesty, I have found our hole. You see, if we..."  
  
"Fine, fine, fine, just do it. I have to practice my violin....again."  
  
"Yes, your majesty, I understand."  
  
He walked down the long hall labeled exit, wondering what he had just done. 


	3. Wait, what kind of panda?

Chapter 3  
  
  
  
-----Ashleyton, D.C., Ashleyland-----  
-----January 25, 2016-----  
  
President Ashley Bus got off the campaign bus (sorry, couldn't resist) at the designated spot for her speech. The election was nine months away, and she wasn't going to waste any time.  
  
Ashley waved to the people, mostly Ashlenian Democrats who had crossed party lines specifically to vote for her. She gave them her charismatic grin. "Hi, everybody!"  
  
The crowd cheered and waved, and she recognized them as the mob her chief of staff had hired to protest outside of Congress when it had refused to replace her name for that dead military/president guy. Not that the public didn't want the name changed. They merely needed a little pushing, just like Congress. Sometimes a lot of pushing. Sometimes you just had to run over them.  
  
She stepped up to the platform and gave her speech about how she needed more time to finish "upgrading Ashleyland", as her plan was called. She ended it with the customary "and remember, don't get left behind by the Bus!". The audience clapped and quickly disappeared. After they had all gone, she let a Secret Service agent lead her to her armored limosine. It sped away as a low-paid former taxi-cab driver drove the bus back to the campaign headquarters.  
  
  
  
-----Paris, France-----  
  
  
The rain poured upon Paris, making the narrow city streets slippery and dangerous. A black thunderbird, now outlawwed for its eco-irresponsiblity, cruised to a stop in a small alley. A tall woman stepped out, whose black leather suit could not conceal her silenced Wolfram PPK. She clutched it in her hand in a death grip.  
  
A door on the building to the left was labeled Kerr Stage Crew. The building was home to France's foremost rock star.  
  
The woman walked to the door, kicking it in. Two men with metal pipes jumped out from behind crates. They ran at her in the dimly lit backstage area. She kicked the first in the ouchies, and gave the second a hard blow to the head with the butt of her gun. The JH inscribed on the bottom of her gun left an imprint on his forehead. They lay where they fell as JH ran up a set of stairs on the other side of the theater.  
  
She encountered five groupies trying to block her on the way up, using her whip to seriously adjust their attitudes. They wouldn't be walking anytime soon, that was definite. She reached the top of the stairs and went down a long hallway at the end of which was a door, like all the others she had seen in the hallway. Except for the fact that it was labeled, JK. She reached for the handle after blowing off the lock with her gun. Suddenly her head was throbbing, as everything got blurry and black.  
  
  
  
-----Toronto, Canada-----  
  
  
"Wow, that had to hurt!" McNeillie said as the Toronto Squirfus lost the tenth rebound of the night.   
  
"Yes, it did!" Stuart replied. The two announcers both new that the Squirfus would long have been dead if not for Phelps, #212. But you just couldn't say that in Women's basketball. They didn't know any better, being football announcers filling in for two deadbeats they knew. Normally, they hosted the BS Sports Show, named after themselves, Brannon and Scott.  
  
Oh well, McNeillie said to himself. "But the Squirfus would long have been dead if not for the efforts of Erika Phelps, their star player!"  
  
Stuart began, "and we all know that she gets paid plenty."  
  
"That's great, Scott." McNeillie replied, irritated. "Let's focus on the game."  
  
  
*NOTE* The origin of Squirfu is it is the Pokemon name for our old english teacher. Thanx for reviewing! 


	4. Well, a black and white one of course!

Author's Note--------Hi everyone. I am writing to tell you to check out the two closely-related stories. (Like anyone reading doesn't already know). They are:  
  
Angel Queen's A time to relax?  
and  
Princess Ella's Make a wish....  
  
Adios~  
  
  
  
Chapter 4  
  
  
-----Rome, Italy-----  
  
Prime Minister Thomason relaxed in her office at the Executive Mansion. She smiled at the poll numbers. Her party held 240 out of 312 seats in Parliament. The public loved her and her policies.  
  
Her political advisers were talking amongst themselves, so she decided to slip out for some fresh air. It was a beautiful day, birds and squirrels talking to each other, but it was terribly windy.  
  
There she stood in her private garden, for a while, taking it all in. Then it got dark and she spotted several large, hateful thunder-filled clouds moving her way. Too bad, she mumbled. She decided to come in and plot the next legislative agenda. More tax cuts!  
  
  
-----New York City, NY, Ashleyland-----  
  
  
The television, a Sony Vision flat screen, reflected the vital signs of Esther Sooter, before the black screen was filled with a podium in Washington. The Washington, no, now it was Bus, Jenny corrected herself. The Bus monument appeared in the background. Some political figure was giving a speech about something or other, Jordan didn't care.  
  
Her friend/would-be killer was recovering in a hospital bed next to her chair. The vital signs moniter was beeping regularly, drowning out Esther's soft breathing and the politician's speech. She changed it to channel 784. Clog dancing. Channel 453. How to peel some sort of rare fruit. Channel 1098. A documentary on the harmful effects of channel surfing.  
  
She clicked it off and began to read. Reading was much more exciting. One didn't need TV for anything except news, and one could get that from an e-paper or the internet.  
  
  
-----Langley, Virginia, Ashleyland-----  
  
  
Another pair of eyes were glued to a television a few hundred miles away, however. They belonged to Geno Lamb, president of GENCO, the world's largest manufacturer of useless things. Everything from pet rocks to keyboard labels to 8-tracks. But now attention was focused on very important things.  
  
The anchorman had just informed the ignorant masses that a small, unknown country known as Elbrowia has acquired nuclear weapons, from an unknown source. An analyist talking with the anchorman suspected N. Korea, but he wasn't sure. The main thing to find out was what this small country's intent was. Everone was still wondering why and how such a poor, small, unknown country could finance such a venture. 


	5. I knew it was black and white, they all ...

Chapter 5  
  
  
  
-----Paris, France-----  
  
  
JH woke up with one heckuva headache, pardon her French. She looked around at her surroundings. THe ceilings were about ten feet high. Two doors. Well-lit. A desk. Raining outside on the balcony and windows. As far as she could tell, she was in the same building.  
  
She tried to move. Her hands and feet were restricted, tied to a chair. Not a terribly comfortable one, either. A man in sunglasses, a beret, and a sky-grey trenchcoat was sitting behind the cherry desk. Above his lip was a long, French-style mustache, which he was rubbing in his fingers as if he were Frued himself.  
  
"Zo, you are awake, hegemon peeg!" he spat despisingly in a thick French accent.  
  
"Let me go, or I'll....I'll.....rip your eyebrows clear off your stinking head!"  
  
"No, no, mizz azzazz-een. You will not be geetting cloze to Monsieur Kerr tuday, I am afraid. He haz gone off to vizit England for a while."  
  
As he retorted, JH was untying her hands in the method she had been taught by her dad. The slippery wet leather helped. She held her hands in place behind her back as the Frenchman walked over to where she was involuntarily seated.  
  
Come a little closer, you, JH hoped. When he was just three feet away, he began again.  
  
"And now we vill make zure you can can not cauze any more..."  
  
JH jumped up, twirling in mid-air to catch the Frenchman in the head with the chair still tied to her feet. As he was stunned for the moment, and bleeding profusely, she found her gun in the desk and ran out the balcony door. She pressed a button on her belt, and then jumped feet-first off the balcony into the rain. She landed into her speeding car with perfect timing. She drove it to the airport.  
  
  
  
-----Ashleyton, DC, Ashleyland-----  
  
  
"Quite obviously, the President is concerned with this development," the Press Secretary said to an always packed crowd. What did one expect? It was their job. "We are skeptical at this time, but we remain vigilant. This would impact the security of all nations, especially former Soviet-bloc nations in Asia."  
  
Paige Gabriel did not like reporters. They asked the most annoying questions.  
  
"Yes, Jimmy?" she pointed to a reporter in the front row.  
  
"Has the President decided on any action to punish N. Korea for proliferation?"  
  
"She has been looking at the situation for a long time and concludes that we should nuke them, but that wouldn't be diplomatic. So the official answer is that she's looking at it. That's all the time we have today."  
  
The anchorman looked disgusted. Then, realizing he was on camera, turned the look into a smile and began talking to the same analyist on earlier who had accused N. Korea in the first place.  
  
  
  
-----Versaille, France-----  
  
Chelli was baking a cookie cake in the palace kitchen when a royal adviser told her of the news. That was what made her decide to put m&m's into the mix. Chocolate let you stay up longer and this evening she would need them. She was going to need to call a cabinet meeting. The Prime Minister would probably say something important. Then the Grand Marshal of the Realm would have to give a report on their own nuclear capabilities.   
  
Then she would have to stay up all night receiving calls from chiefs of state from countries that actually cared about her own country's opinions. She hoped that Great Britain would call. They had nukes, too.  
  
The cookie cake turned out burnt. It wasn't her fault. It was just that the soap opera on television looked much more interesting and had distracted her. She didn't like burnt cookie cake. 


	6. Ok, it's name is Shangzi, does that tell...

Author's note: Sorry for the errors, i'm fixing them as fast as I can---Thanx~ BTW, no shameless advertising is allowed, Chelli. Especially if you want to advertise:   
  
Angel Queen's A time to relax?  
  
or  
  
Princess Ella's A wish is a dream..... (or something like that)  
  
or  
  
Perky Goth Chik's Repeated History  
  
  
  
  
Chapter 6  
  
  
  
-----Langley, Virginia, Ashleyland-----  
  
Ashley Lamb said goodnight to Genely and went back downstairs to talk to Geno. He was working on a plan for pencil covers when Ashley walked in.  
  
"I think our son needs professional help," she proclaimed.  
  
"What makes you think that, dear?"  
  
"I don't know. Maybe the time he set the school on fire, the time he tried to push my pink van into the Potomac, the time he blinded Molly next door with a Nerf gun, the time he stapled his mouth shut, the time he..."  
  
"Okay! Okay! I get the picture," Geno sighed. "Where do you want to take him?"  
  
"Well, I've done some research. The best (and cheapest, she didn't add) is in London, England. They have a sort of resort where the person can live and receive psychiatric help."  
  
"Fine, fine. Pack our bags then, I'll call Melissa (his secretary) to tell her I'm leaving the country and to cancel my meetings."  
  
Then, he opened up his new PC, only to find that it didn't contain a golden Pentium processor.  
  
-----Upstairs-----  
  
Meanwhile, Genely was listening in at the top of the stairs. Hmmm, he wondered. This will not be good.  
  
Suddenly, an idea struck him. He would run away tonight and try to break into Willy Werna's Science Factory. He would call Microsoft first. They could keep him away for a while from his parents.  
  
-----Redmond, Washington, Ashleyland-----  
  
"Bill Gates is mad. Real mad," a red-haired lady said.  
  
"Mad? My steaks are ruined. These tupperware containers aren't worth anything!" Bill replied.  
  
"You should get Gladware. Don't get mad, get..."  
  
Bill Gates turned off the commercial he had appeared in. It was always good to get good publicity. He had donated the money he made off of that to help rebuild his robot army. It just wasn't the same after his attempted takeover of AOL Time Warner.  
  
Suddenly, the phone rang.  
  
"Gates here."  
  
"Mr. Gates, hi, my name is Genely."  
  
They talked for another twenty minutes. Then Gates hang up, sat down in his egg chair, called his cat, and began to pet it while contemplating the evil plan he had adopted at the request of his new spy, er, friend.  
  
  
-----Paris, France-----  
  
  
JH exited the elevator and walked toward her terminal. Flight 1007 to London was flying out of gate P. She had no luggage. She had but one weapon. She wore black leather.  
  
Airport Security nearly had a heart attack when they saw the gun in the x-ray machine. She casually made a gesture like cutting one's head off, the international symbol of doom. The Airport Security guards understood. Being un-firable government employees, they could let her go through without anything resembling punity but a letter of reprimand.  
  
She boarded her flight and sat down to an young French man. When he tried to check her out, she knocked him out. The stewardesses nearly lost it. JH made the international symbol of doom and....  
  
-----London, England, U.K.-----  
  
Queen Katie glanced down at the British International Times. In big letters it said across the top, "Nobody Nation gets Nukes". Below that it said, "World-Famous Rock Star comes to London for Concert".  
  
She looked around at her prime minister's cabinet. She had dissolved parliament, the first to do so since Henry VIII.  
  
"What does this mean for us?" she asked the silent team.  
  
The Culture minister spoke up. "It means we can go see a concert for free! He gave us twelve tickets, and because there are fourteen cabinet members, we're going to have to draw str..."  
  
"I mean about the nukes! Duh! Silly Culture minister!"  
  
"Oh."  
  
"It means," General Rogers began, "that we should persue a policy of containment and sanction against these people. They could blackmail any country south of Russia, well, even Russia is vulnerable."  
  
"Draw up a plan for me to sign." The queen wanted action. So did France, but the queen of France had fallen asleep from exhaustion during their conversation, so Katie had to guess at what France's position was and hope it was right. 


	7. No, it really doesn't, but i suppose it ...

-----Langley, Virginia, Ashleyland-----  
-----Somewhere between upstairs and downstairs-----  
  
"Sweetie-kins, we're going for a trip!" Ashley announced, coming up the oak stairs (not a very bright oak color, but bright enough to contrast with the dark walls in the foyer, pronounced fo-yay, and definitely not too dark as to blend in and cause someone to trip, because that wouldn't be good).  
  
She heard a window slam before entering the bedroom of Genely to find a big lump on his bed. So, he was fast asleep. Does he really expect me to believe that? Ashley asked herself. Ok, she thought, heading for her own bed.  
  
-----Outside-----  
  
"Mwa ha ha ha ha!" Genely laughed at his parent's ineptitude. He looked up to his bedroom window, where the light flickered off.  
  
They really think I'm asleep! he gloated. Now I can do what I want.  
  
He jumped over the wooden fence (I'm pretty sure it wasn't oak, but it could have been, maybe even a maple-ish color). His eighties style shoes stirred the dirt on the baseball lot as he ran across it, coming ever closer to Willie Werna's Science Factory.  
  
  
-----In the air above London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland-----  
  
JH climbed out of her seat, knocking over the Frenchman she had knocked out earlier. She decided to explore the plane, and upon seeing her gun, the stewardesses were obliged to comply.  
  
JH decided to check the luggage room and see if any of Jk's stuff was there.  
  
She opened the metal door, and turned on the weak lights. The cold metal stench gripped her nose as she uncovered various crates.  
  
Suddenly, two stewards with boxes of peanuts jumped out from inside the crates labeled, "stewards with boxes of peanuts"!  
  
She used a karate kick to disable them both at once, yet more jumped out of boxes towards the door.  
  
JH yelled for help as the young flight attendents smothered her in a dog pile.  
  
  
-----New York, NY, Ashleyland-----  
  
Esther opened her eyes to a brightly lit room, with white and such. How perky, she mumbled to herself.   
  
She looked up to find Jenny, who was starring at the TV with big eyes. Esther tried to say something, yet her throat wouldn't make the sound. Just great, she thought, I've got the Malaysian Strep Throat!  
  
She closed her eyes as she pondered how the vaccine she got on her last mission could have failed. 


End file.
